The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place (2 page)

Staying with my uncles—Alex, who was an old bachelor, and Morris, his brother, a widower—had been one of my two first choices of “What to do with Margaret” while my parents were in Peru. The Uncles lived in an old house on Schuyler Place. I loved them, their house, and their garden.

—
them

I loved their Old World habits. Like wearing a Borsalino hat from Italy instead of a baseball cap. Neither one of them owned a baseball cap. Or blue jeans. Or sneakers. Or a sports shirt. They never watched sports
on TV and had never been to a football game, even when the home team, Clarion State University, was playing. They could speak three languages besides English. They had wine with dinner every night and ate so late that sometimes it was midnight when they finished. They served coffee with real cream and lump sugar that they dropped into the cup with a tiny pair of tongs. They had never eaten at a McDonald's or standing up. Even in the summer when they ate in their garden, they still covered their table with a white linen cloth, served their wine in crystal goblets, and their food on china dishes. And they never hurried through dinner. If it got to be too late when they finished eating, they would leave unwashed dishes in the sink and go to bed.

—
their house

I
loved 19 Schuyler Place. It was within walking distance of Town Square, a city bus stop, the main library, and the pedestrian mall downtown. I loved sleeping over. Two years before, when I was only ten, they had allowed me to pick out the furniture for the bedroom that they told me would be mine whenever I came to visit. They took me to Sears in the Fivemile Creek Mall and let me choose. I chose a bedroom
suite
with only one twin bed (the room was small) in genuine French
provincial style, white with gold-tone accents. When it was delivered, Uncle Morris had said, “Very distinguished,” and Uncle Alex proclaimed it, “Quite elegant.” I was so convinced that they approved of everything I did that I believed them.

—
their garden

Their garden was unlike any other in the neighbor-hood—or the world. Like all the others nearby, theirs had started out as a long, narrow yard that stretched from the service porch in back of the house to the alley, but the resemblance stopped where it started.

The Uncles had unevenly divided their backyard space lengthwise into two thirds and one third. They further divided the narrower, one-third section, in half, crosswise. In the narrow third closest to the house, Uncle Morris raised peppers. They grew in shapes from bell to cornucopia and in flavors from sweet to jalapeno. Their colors were red, yellow, purple, and every shade of green from lime to pine. The other half of the narrow third was planted with roses. Entirely with roses. Some were trained to grow along the iron pipe fence that separated their yard from their neighbor's at number 17. Others grew in their own hoed crater of earth. Some blossoms were quiet and tiny as a bud; others were loud and six inches wide. There were
many varieties, many sizes, but they were a symphony of a single chord, for all of them were rose colored—blooming in every shade from delicate to brazen, from blush to Pepto-Bismol.

In the larger section, the two-thirds, wider strip, were the towers. There were three of them. They zigged and zagged along the perimeter of the fence that separated my uncles' yard from their neighbor's at number 21. They soared over the rooftop of their house and every other house in the neighborhood. The tallest was Tower Two, so called because it was the second one built, and it was closest to the house. Tower Three was in the slant middle.

My uncles had been building them for the past forty-five years.

Even though all of the towers were taller than any of the two-story houses in the neighborhood, even though they were made of steel, they did not darken the space around them. They were built of a network of ribs and struts that cast more light than shadow. Like a spiderweb, they were strong but delicate. From each of the rungs, from each section of each of the rungs, dangled thousands—
thousands
—of chips of glass and shards of porcelain and the inner workings of old clocks. Some of the pendants were short and hugged the horizontal ribs, while others dangled on long threads of copper. In
some places, a single wire held two drops of glass, one under the other; in other places, there were three—dangling consecutively, one beneath the other. Some of the pendants were evenly spaced in groups of three or four. Some were bunched together like the sixteenth notes on a musical staff followed by a single large porcelain bob—a whole note rest. On another rung, or perhaps at a distance on the same rung, a series of evenly spaced glass drops dangled in a rainbow of colors.

Like gypsy music (my uncles were Hungarian), the pendants hung in a rhythm that is learned but cannot be taught.

The towers were painted. Not solemnly but astonishingly. Astoundingly. There were carnival shades of mauve and violet, ochre and rose, bright pink and orange sherbet, and all the colors were stop-and-go, mottled into a camouflage pattern. Lavender pink met lime green in the middle of a rung, or cerulean blue climbed only halfway up a vertical axis until it met aquamarine.

On top of the tallest tower, fixed in place, were four clock faces, none of which were alike. Atop the other two towers was a single clock face on a swivel that rotated with the wind. The clock faces had no hands.

I loved standing under the towers—choose any one, depending on the time of day—looking up and
farther up, until the back of my head rested on my shoulders. I would hang there until a certain slant of light caught the pendants and made them refract an endless pattern of colors. And then, and then I would spin around and around, making myself the moving sleeve of a kaleidoscope. And when I stopped, I would look down and watch their still-spinning shadow embroider the ground.

I had always loved spending time at 19 Schuyler Place, and I thought that my uncles loved having me. I expected them to jump at a chance to have me spend the four summer weeks that my parents would be gone. But they had not.

My other first choice of “What to do with Margaret” had been to go with my parents to Peru. They had always taken me with them before. I had assumed they would want me along because as an only child, I had spent a great deal of time among adults, and I was an excellent traveling companion. I never required extra bathroom stops—my mother always carried empty cottage cheese containers as an emergency portable potty—never demanded special foods, and regardless of how endless the car ride was, I never asked, “Are we there yet?”

Since I was not given either of my two first choices, the only remaining alternative was summer camp. That
being the case, I decided that the choice of camp would be mine and mine alone. So it was with a bruised heart and wounded pride that I set about making my selection. I decided that I would choose such a wonderful camp and have such a wonderful time that my parents and my uncles would be sorry that they had not come, too.

I invested many hours in making my decision. I sent away for thirty-six brochures, read them all, and sent away for thirty-two tapes, of which I watched a total of nineteen all the way through. I chose Talequa.

After recovering from the shock of Uncle's unannounced appearance, Mrs. Kaplan asked, “Why, Mr. Rose, did you not give us notice of your arrival?”

“Because if I had, Mrs. Kaplan,” he replied, “you would have told me not to come.”

That was true, but she did not have to admit or deny it. “How did you get here?” she asked.

“I walked.”

No one walked into Camp Talequa. Visitors arrived by car or minivan and by invitation. Mrs. Kaplan had heard that once, long before she had bought the camp, an elderly couple had arrived in a taxi, but there were no living witnesses to that story, so she placed it into the category of creation myth. But even if there really had
once been a couple who had arrived in a taxi, no one had ever
walked
into Camp Talequa. There was no rule against it because who would have dreamed that such a rule would be necessary? Actually, there were no rules at all about
how
to arrive, but the Talequa handbook made it clear that there were definite rules about
when.
One strict rule was: No visits from friends or relatives for the first two weeks of a session, which, in Mrs. Kaplan's interpretation, made Alexander Rose a trespasser. There were other rules—rules about what you could bring with you. Alcohol and drugs were explicitly forbidden, of course, but it was just as clearly written, so were dogs. The punishment for bringing a dog was not as well defined as that for alcohol or drugs (immediate, nonrefundable expulsion), but the basic animal rule was: Dogs were not allowed in camp. Never. Paper trained, potty trained, K-9 trained: No. Even if they were trained to flush, they were not allowed. There was to be no Lassie, no Pluto, no Scooby-Doo. Never. Not as visitors. Not
with
visitors.

And this man had brought a dog!

Collecting her wits, Mrs. Kaplan presented Uncle with her best varnished smile. “We are most willing to discuss Margaret's problem with you,” she declared, “but, Mr. Rose, we cannot permit dogs on our premises.”

Alexander Rose knew that any smile that registered
as high on the gloss meter as Mrs. Kaplan's came from well-practiced insincerity. Uncle also knew that Mrs. Kaplan did not object to Tartufo as much as she objected to his disobeying one—no, really
two
—of her rules. He could have told her that Tartufo was a working dog and allowed to go where no dog had gone before. He could have asked her, Would an ordinary dog be allowed on a Greyhound? But, wisely, he didn't tell, and he didn't ask. Instead, he said, “Tartufo is here, Mrs. Kaplan. I'm not a magician. I cannot make him disappear.”

With her smile lashed to her teeth, Mrs. Kaplan replied, “Then we must insist that it wait outside.”

Uncle had learned long ago that obeying a rule in fact but not in spirit was very hard on people who say
we
for
I
and who do not allow dogs on their premises. So without hesitation, he led Tartufo to a spot just outside the front door of the office cabin. With the door open so that Mrs. Kaplan could hear, he told Tartufo to sit. Then he removed Tartufo's leash and carried it back into the office.

When he reentered, Mrs. Kaplan had her back to him. She was removing a file folder from a cabinet behind her desk. Uncle stood in front of the desk, conspicuously holding the empty leash in his hand. When she turned around and saw the leash, she realized that
not only was there a dog on her premises, but it was not tethered. The smile left her face, and her mouth formed a Gothic O. She started to say something, thought better of it, and didn't. Instead, she sat down, opened the file, and began studying it. The file was all about me, Margaret Rose. Considering that this was only my ninth day at camp, the folder was quite full.

Uncle continued to stand, waiting for Mrs. Kaplan to look up again. “May I be seated?” he asked.

“Please,” she said, sweeping her hand toward the right chair, one of two that faced her desk.

Uncle sat down, quickly got up and moved the chair four inches, sat down, got up and moved it again in the opposite direction, and then did it a third time. “What seems to be the problem, Mr. Rose?”

“The sun,” he said. “It's shining in my eyes, and you are a dark shadow.” Uncle meant every word.

Wearing her patience like a body stocking, Mrs. Kaplan said, “Suppose you take the other chair.”

“Good idea,” Uncle said, and moved that chair once before settling down. With a fussiness as elaborate as it was deliberate, he inched his bottom toward the back of the chair. He steadied his gaze on the woman sitting across the desk from him and waited until only the sheerest shroud of patience remained. Then he folded his hands in his lap and said, “Now we can talk.”

In more ways than one, Alexander Rose resembled a set of Matryoshka nesting dolls. He was short and squat, he had many fully formed layers beneath his roly-poly outer shell, and deep inside was an innermost self, a core that was solid and indivisible.

In an unconscious effort to create as much distance as possible between them, Mrs. Kaplan leaned back in her chair and slowly turned the full force of an uppish smile on him. “We see, Mr. Rose, that you are not this child's parent.”

“That is correct. I am her granduncle.”

“You must mean
great-uncle.”

“Great or grand, they mean the same: I am the brother of her grandmother.” Mrs. Kaplan was not sure if
great-uncle
and
granduncle
were interchangeable, but she decided to let his remark go. She would check it later. Uncle said, “At the moment, though, since Margaret's parents are out of the country and unable to tend to her, I am
in loco parentis,
in the position of a parent.”

Mrs. Kaplan replied, “We know perfectly well what
in loco parentis
means, Mr. Rose.” But as soon as she said it, she regretted it. This interview was not going well. Best to get to the matter at hand. “Yes, it was in your capacity as guardian of Margaret that I called you last night. As I mentioned on the phone, Margaret refuses to participate in any of our activities. She
says, ‘I prefer not to.'” Tapping the folder, she said, “We have here a report from Gloria, Margaret's camp counselor.” She lowered her head, put on her glasses, and began reading aloud. “On Monday—

Margaret did not take a copy of the words to our camp songs when I was passing them out. I did not force a copy on her because I assumed that like a lot of our other girls, she had learned the words from our tape. Then on Tuesday, our karaoke and sing-along evening, she did not sing with the group. When I asked her why, she said it was because she didn't know the words.”

Mrs. Kaplan raised her voice slightly while reading the phrase
because she didn't know the words.
She looked over her reading glasses at Uncle and waited until he indicated with a nod that he had caught the significance of her emphasis. She continued, “On Wednesday—